Football Dominates Discussion Of College Sports' Changing Landscape

ADs discuss how their schools are dealing with the changing landscape of college athletics

A panel of four athletic directors spoke at length yesterday afternoon at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum on how their programs are affected by the changing landscape in college sports, and football continued to dominate the conversation. All the panelists were concerned about how the new BCS revenue-sharing format will affect their schools.

UNLV AD Jim Livengood thought that who gets what share of the BCS pie when it is split up would still be dependent on who ends up in what conferences. Old Dominion AD Wood Selig added that at the end of the day, if the top 60-70 schools break off and form a new top tier, it would diminish the work of getting to the FBS for Old Dominion. Selig: “How long can we be chasing these guys? If they go to another level, we really haven’t done much.” BYU AD Tom Holmoe added, “It’s all relative, but you want to get to the best position possible to put your brand, and all of ours differ to some degree, but we all want to put our brand in the community, to our alums and hopefully across the country.”

All panelists thought that four was not enough for the new college playoff format. “I think that the natural number is closer to being eight,” Livengood predicted after participating in a mock playoff selection project. “We’ve shown we always need more money in college athletics.”